Anthony Mahfouz spent two years of high school teaching himself to build an app, working through Christmas breaks, spring breaks and a summer vacation, all so seniors struggling with memory loss might have an easier way to hold onto their thoughts. The 18-year-old Catholic High School senior in Little Rock built Memory Journal – Voice Diary after watching his grandfather, Ronnie Joseph “RJ” Mahfouz, battle Alzheimer's. Apple has now approved the app for listing in its App Store.
According to Arkansas Catholic, Mahfouz started working on the project during his sophomore year specifically to help his grandfather, who was battling Alzheimer's at the time. The idea traced back to a robotics course that same year, where Mahfouz first discovered he had a knack for coding. As he put it to the outlet, “I had been in robotics for that entire year, so I'd been doing a lot of coding.”
Mahfouz has said the condition touched his own family directly, telling KARK that dementia runs within his family. His grandfather's diagnosis gave the project its purpose from the start, and the teen kept building even as his course load grew heavier through his junior year.
Two Years of Coding Around a School Schedule
Per the seed report, Mahfouz researched and coded during school breaks, including Christmas and spring break, before putting in the bulk of his programming work over the summer before his senior year. He worked on the app throughout his junior year in the 2025-2026 school year whenever he had free time, the Arkansas Catholic report notes. By his own account, Mahfouz said, “I had been working on it for two years” by the time it reached users.
The app itself is built around voice recording, letting users log memos, take notes and share them with others, functions Mahfouz designed with a specific audience in mind. “Primarily, the audience I'm targeting is elderly,” he said, according to the same outlet. The seed KARK report describes the app as including voice recording along with the ability to classify family members under memories, features meant to help users recall people and past events.
Built Like a Recorder, But Designed for Seniors
Mahfouz has described the interface in simple terms: it's kind of built like any other voice recorder, he said, but the difference is it's specifically designed for seniors, according to the station's report. Before finalizing the design, Mahfouz tested the app with local nursing homes and family members, per the seed account, then used that feedback to refine it further. Arkansas Catholic reports he had groups of people test the app and tell him their thoughts so he could improve the design.
Mahfouz submitted the finished product to Apple, and the company granted official approval to list the app in the App Store, Arkansas Catholic reports. KARK's reporting indicates the app became available on the Apple App Store in September. Dementia itself can cause memory loss, confusion and a distorted sense of reality, according to the seed report's description of the condition that shaped the project.
A Problem Bigger Than One Family
The scale of the issue Mahfouz is responding to is significant in his home state. An estimated 60,400 Arkansas seniors are living with Alzheimer's dementia, representing 11.3% of adults over 65, according to a handout prepared for the Arkansas General Assembly's Alzheimer's and Dementia Advisory Council. The same document says more than 175,000 Arkansans provided 268 million hours of unpaid care for a family member or friend with dementia, a contribution valued at $5.0 billion.
That advisory council's handout also points to broader research trends in the field, noting that the U.S. POINTER study found a structured lifestyle program focused on nutrition, exercise, cognitive engagement and health monitoring improved thinking and memory over two years among people at risk of memory loss or dementia. Participants in that structured program performed like people who were one to almost two years younger, the handout states. Separately, the council's materials note that early detection has improved with the emergence of blood-based biomarkers.
How Mahfouz's App Fits a Growing Field
Mahfouz's project joins a small but growing category of digital reminiscence tools aimed at older adults, though the research behind similar efforts remains early-stage. A study published via ScienceDirect examined GoodTimes, an AI-driven interactive photo album designed to prompt personalized reminiscence conversations, testing it with 13 older adults ages 58 to 84 between January and March 2023. Researchers reported that 12 of the 13 participants had a positive experience conversing with the app, while 11 of 13 said it helped them recollect loved ones and produced happiness, according to the study. The same researchers cautioned that future work is needed to explore its potential effects among older adults with cognitive impairment specifically.
A separate tool, the Living Memory Home for Dementia Care Pairs, was tested in a clinical trial involving 34 pairs of people with mild to moderate dementia and their caregivers, according to USC's Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. That app includes photo albums, autobiographical questions, journaling prompts and conversation features, and researchers found that full use of it was associated with significant reductions in pre-death grief among patients and caregivers. The team behind it says it plans larger and more in-depth clinical trials going forward.
Looking Ahead to College
Mahfouz plans to graduate next spring and study computer science in college, according to Arkansas Catholic's report. He has said he hopes to eventually combine computer science with the medical field to develop solutions to dementia-related issues, carrying forward the motivation that started with his grandfather's diagnosis. For now, the app stands as a tribute built during study halls, holiday breaks and a single Arkansas summer, aimed at giving seniors like his grandfather a simple tool to hold onto their memories.
